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Reel After Reel Of Festival Films, Current and Classic

By G. S. BOURDAIN

Published: April 8, 1988

LIKE a reel of film that just popped its sprockets, movie festivals are springing up at such a furious pace that it's almost impossible to stay abreast of them. This weekend, the offerings include the opening of Perspectives on French Cinema and an adjunct retrospective of Louis Malle's French films at the Museum of Modern Art; the continuation of ''The Hustons,'' a family retrospective of films by and with Walter, John, Anjelica and Tony Huston at the recently refurbished and newly named Biograph Cinema, and the Global Village Documentary Festival at the Public Theater, which includes work by Jonathan Demme and Peter Watkins and films with such artists as Meryl Streep, Cissy Houston, Ellen Stewart, Harvey Fierstein and Elizabeth Swados.

Other events are a bill of award-winning documentaries at the Brooklyn Museum; an Asia Society program of films from Sri Lanka, including that country's first cinematic cheek-to-cheek embrace; a group of animated films by Faith Hubley today and six short subjects by Shirley Clarke tomorrow at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights; some new Super-8 films from France at the Collective for Living Cinema, and a continuing series of American films from pre-Production Code days at the Film Forum 2.

The only thing to do is to stock up on eye drops and head into the dark. New From France

Film buffs love to be among the first viewers of new releases, and the Museum of Modern Art offers just that pleasure in this year's installment of the Perspectives on French Cinema series, organized by Laurence Kardish and Adrienne Mancia, curators in the museum's film department. Mr. Kardish calls the annual series ''an enthusiastic survey.''

''The French cinema continues to be astonishingly rich,'' Mr. Kardish said this week, ''and it seems to have a consistently large and enthusiastic audience in New York. As always, we were looking for a mix of directors who are known and directors who are not known. Also, films that were well made and good solid entertainment. All of this year's films are a bit unusual, as well; they work within the conventional boundaries, but they play with them.''

The newest work is that of Josiane Balasko, a 38-year-old actress who directed her first film in 1985. She directed and co-stars in ''Les Keufs,'' a police comedy about a ''keuf'' (slang for policewoman) who helps a prostitute trap her pimp. The film very matter-of-factly examines racism in France and makes its own statement by having the policewoman begin a love affair with her black policeman partner. Jean-Pierre Leaud, who was Francois Truffaut's alter ego in so many films, plays an excitable chief of detectives.

Crime is the theme also of Jean-Pierre Mocky's ''Agent Trouble'' -in which an at first almost unrecognizable Catherine Deneuve plays a middle-aged librarian who decides to investigate the seeming cover-up of a mass execution - and of ''Saxo,'' a second feature by Ariel Zeitoun, a Tunisian director. In ''Saxo,'' a down-at-the-heels music producer (Gerard Lanvin) in desperate need of a money-making act stumbles upon an American brother and sister who play some of the best jazz he has ever heard. After he signs them, he discovers that the brother is a psychopath. Akosua Busia, who appeared in ''The Color Purple'' and ''Native Son,'' and Richard Brooks are the co-stars.

The French series gets under way tonight with Patrice Leconte's ''Tandem,'' in which Jean Rochefort plays the seedy host of a radio quiz show that is about to be canceled.

Among the other films are ''Traveling Avant,'' Jean-Charles Tacchella's homage to the postwar cinephilia in which the New Wave flourished; ''Le Cri du Hibou'' (''Cry of the Owl'') by Claude Chabrol, based on a psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith, and ''Les Innocents,'' with script and direction by Andre Techine, in which Sandrine Bonnaire - last year's ''Vagabond'' - falls in love with two men and messes up several lives.

Two offbeat selections in the series -''Jane B. by Agnes V.'' and ''Kung Fu Master'' - are two parts of a whole directed by Agnes Varda and dedicated to and starring the actress Jane Birkin. The first part is a portrait-collage of the actress in various imaginary sequences; in the second part, based on her own idea, Ms. Birkin plays a 40-year-old woman who falls in love with a 15-year-old video-game fanatic. Ms. Varda's son, Mathieu Demy, and Ms. Birkin's daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and mother, Judy Campbell, the English actress, are co-stars.

For the first time, tickets to Perspectives on French Cinema will be sold separately instead of being included in the museum admission fee, and the screenings will be later in the day, at 6 or 6:30 and at 8:30 or 9 P.M.

Mr. Kardish explained: ''The program was so popular last year and there were so many people who wanted desperately to see the films but couldn't come in the afternoon that we decided to keep the theater open in the evening this time, and we had to charge a modest admission to cover our expenses. Then, because we didn't want to deprive our members of the daytime program, and since we had wanted for a while to do a Louis Malle retrospective, we decided to show his French work.''